Gone are the days when travelers have to pack bulky items. Now they can just borrow instead.

NeighborGoods is changing the face of consumption, facilitating a borrowing and lending culture within neighborhoods. This is great for people who want to meet their neighbors and spend less, but it’s also great for travelers who want to meet locals and borrow items they didn’t want to bring along for the trip. I spoke with the founder/CEO of the site, Micki Krimmel, via email about the potential the site holds for travelers.

“One of my favorite personal experiences using NeighborGoods was when I was traveling. I was in Austin, TX for the South by Southwest festival and I borrowed a bike from a local. I searched the Austin area and set it up before I arrived. It saved me hundreds of dollars in transportation costs and helped me experience the city like a local. Another great example of this is a new mother who was traveling alone to LA to visit family for a week. She didn’t want to haul her baby stroller on the plane by herself so she found someone in LA willing to lend her one for the duration of her stay.”

Krimmel went on to discuss another benefit travelers might find in using NeighborGoods:

“Travelers who prefer to pack lightly will find that NeighborGoods is a great resource to borrow bulky items that don’t travel well like baby strollers or sporting equipment. Borrowing a bike or a surfboard from a local also helps travelers avoid tourist traps and experience their destination more like a local.”

SXSW 2013 has come to a close. Everyone who attended the music, film and interactive festival is no doubt spending this week recuperating. After having spent the last two consecutive years at SXSW, I’ll admit that it felt weird to skip out on the festivities this year (however, Gadling’s Robin Whitney was on the ground). I went searching for a good video from the event and found this one by Giovanni Gallucci. Pairing images of live events with the streets and everything in between, Gallucci captured the essence of SXSW well with these shots. Enjoy.

For the uninitiated – all 10 of you – Grumpy Cat became a viral obsession last fall, after her owner’s brother posted her photo to Reddit. The 11-month-old, Arizona-based feline is of curious ancestry (she’s believed to be part Ragdoll breed, and her permanently frowny face and small size are genetic quirks). In reality, says her owner, Tabatha Bundesen (who also runs the Grumpy Cat™ website), “Tard” is sweet and playful … when she’s not sleeping. There are Grumpy Cat memes, merch and thousands of fans, of which I’m unapologetically one.

I follow Grumpy Cat on Twitter and live for The Daily Grump on her site, which posts new photos of Tard and her brother Pokey doing their thing. What can I say? Grumpy Cat just makes me happy. If you happen to be at SXSW, come visit her at the Mashable tech tent, where she’s holding court from her cat bed, and posing for photos (in between naps, of course). Celebrity apparently hasn’t changed her a bit.

Considered by many as the SXSW of cruise travel, Cruise Shipping Miami is an annual mega-convention that starts Monday in Miami, Florida. On hand will be cruise line executives and travel experts participating in panel discussions, workshops and more during the four-day event, on track to draw record attendance this year.

The four-day trade show highlights all the latest and greatest would-be cruise ship features that we might see in the future. Press conferences, including a “State of the Industry” panel, will surely address the ongoing issue of safety at sea as well as new, upcoming trends.

As cruise lines focus on differentiating themselves from one another, seminars on everything from expedition cruising to social media, environmental issues and refurbishing older ships. Gadling will be on hand, looking for answers to questions readers have raised since last year’s show.At the 2011 Cruise Shipping Miami conference, we investigated new things you might see on a cruise ship in the future, some of which made it – others not so much. Last year we saw a focus on new ports, top-deck features and safety issues in the wake of the Costa Concordia grounding. Gadling will be on hand this year as well, reporting back with a roundup of the conference and answers to your questions.

Have something you’re dying to know about cruise travel? Now is the time to ask with a comment below. Follow @CruiseShipping and the hashtag #CSM2013 on Twitter for live updates throughout the event.

Cruise Shipping Miami also features exhibits and demonstrations from destinations around the world. At last year’s show, Japanese Taiko Drumming was one such event as we see in this video.

When I initially began weighing my options for relocation, I was still living in New York. Austin, a purported ‘oasis’ in Texas, had only entered my mind during this process because of clamoring friends eager to direct me as I prepared for and soon voyaged away from New York. It was not easy to leave the city that had shaped me. Immediately following high school graduation, I had set off for New York with the kind of bravado only a teenager can possess — that asinine invincibility. Years flew by before I grew antsy and curious about life in other cities.

To live in L.A.: to drive with the windows down through glamorously warm-breeze-blowing nights. To live in Seattle: to meander through continuous gray days months at a time, answering the question of what to do with cozy, dedicated, indoor creation. To live in Austin: to surrender to sunny surrealism marked by hammocks and the time to lie in them, to melt into a dimension wherein the rhythm of the music is the heartbeat of the city. I needed to detox from New York; I needed a long time to pass before I heard the word “networking” again. I longed for sunshine. My music, I thought, deserved to and would best grow in a place where people harvest music. To live in Austin, to pack a 1996 Honda Accord so full with instruments that my stomach is positioned dangerously close to the steering wheel, to drive for three days without air conditioning through increasingly hotter air, to wonder if I’m making a big mistake.

New York had been my mold that cast me into adult form and I knew this. I knew it less while living in the city than I did upon trying to live in non-New York. Anyone can blend into a city like New York. People say the same thing about Austin, but I don’t think it’s true. Austin moves at a slower pace and exudes a distinct feel. But everything in Austin changes in March for SXSW.

%Gallery-151126%One thing I liked about living in New York was the feeling that everything was happening in the town where I lived and that everyone was either there or wishing they were there. Since uprooting and replanting myself in Austin, I don’t often feel this way. With the exception of SXSW, I never feel this way. Austin is a vacuum for creative professionals during SXSW. Throughout this chunk of time every March, Austin attracts entertainment industry movers and shakers from around the world. SXSW 2012 was my second “South By.” Undeniable nostalgia washed over me as the hordes of talented city-dwellers infiltrated Austin. Uneasy as it may still feel to address Austin as “my town,” it is my town for now. Living in Austin during SXSW allows me to feel as though my town is the only town on the radar for other creatives for a short period of time. It’s a chin-up, pleasing sort of feeling, but feelings toward SXSW are, like so many things, layered and complex.

Austin during SXSW reminds me of New York in that city-centric way. But as with any popular city or festival there are parallels that remind me of why I left New York in the first place. When SXSW hits Austin, residents are bombarded with inconvenience from multiple angles. Lattes cost more, beers cost more and food from restaurants or food trucks costs more, too. Traffic is already a problem in a town growing as quickly as Austin, but traffic during SXSW has become a major hindrance. Although anticipated, the expectation doesn’t make the traffic any less inconvenient. I spent nearly double what I normally spend on gas during SXSW and I didn’t travel more miles — I just spent more time sitting in traffic. Taxis, even when called in advance, may require over an hour wait. Parking is a nightmare. The buses and metro may be filled. Your bike, if it happens upon the fate of my husband’s bike, will be stolen. Drunk people scream through the streets no matter the time. Other drunk people pass out on the streets, hoping you’ll see them sprawled out on the sidewalk before tripping over their tattered skinny-jean legs. They vomit, fight, grope one another and, generally speaking, behave in ways many people would behave had they been drinking for free since 11 a.m. It seems as though no matter how much Austin prepares for SXSW, the festival continues to reel in more people than expected each year and the combined resources of the city can only go so far. Visitors should come to Austin during the festival expecting the sort of inconveniences that appear alongside an attraction this large. Residents have been taught to expect these inconveniences.

There is a silver lining among the inconveniences, though. Some of these inconveniences affect visitors only and create moneymaking opportunities for enterprising locals. Take hotels, for instance. Not only do hotels raise their rates for SXSW, but also the rooms sell out quickly and there aren’t enough rooms in town to accommodate all of the visitors. Renting a room or a house through a website like Airbnb, Homeaway or Craigslist can yield quick and easy income for an Austinite with a flexible living space. In most thinkable circumstances, SXSW provides outstanding demand for that of which there is not enough supply. Just about any local can explore myriad business opportunities during SXSW. This is a good thing. It boosts the economy of the city of Austin as a whole while simultaneously fluffing the personal bank accounts of entrepreneurial Austin residents. SXSW 2012 fluffed my income enough to afford my purchases of a PA system, 3 microphones and stands, a nice delay pedal and a new guitar amp.

The perspective I have of SXSW as a musician is one I presume is not unique. It is an incomparable festival. Life as we know it in Austin comes to a standstill for the sake of music and there is something innately rewarding about that. Music can be heard on every corner and reverb through microphones across the city tucks me into bed when I finally resign to sleep. I played two shows during SXSW and opened for two headlining acts from other cities, both of whom I like, respect and otherwise might not ever share a stage. Opportunities like these arise beneath the wings of a festival like SXSW. Music is on every mind in town during the music portion of the festival. To play with passion during SXSW should come secondhand. People are listening with passion and to be given a chance to reflect that back to an audience so easily is a gift.

The shows can be more complicated than non-SXSW shows, though. Loading gear in and out of clubs quickly to and from cars illegally parked with their hazards on in the rain. Beginning a show without much of a chance to sound check because there are simply too many bands playing for most shows to be anything other than behind schedule. Wading through some of the unavoidable slime that drips off of a certain percentage of people employed by the music industry. All of these things are par for the course, but they are sometimes illuminated during SXSW. It is mostly inspiring and fun; it is only marginally a drag. The good far outweighs the bad on the topic of playing shows during a music festival so big you can feel the current of electricity throbbing through the air.

And then SXSW ends and Austin goes eerily quiet during the gloriously peaceful week that follows.